


only the shape of a falling star

by Silver_Queen_DoS



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fix It, Gen, Master of Death Harry Potter, Temporary Character Death, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25890931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silver_Queen_DoS/pseuds/Silver_Queen_DoS
Summary: Sirius gets a second chance to fix everything.
Relationships: Regulus Black & Sirius Black
Comments: 18
Kudos: 517
Collections: Alternate Universe Exchange 2020, Terrific Time Travel Fics





	only the shape of a falling star

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sky_King](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sky_King/gifts).



> Title from [HOW TO SAVE YOUR OWN LIFE](https://therisingphoenixreview.com/2015/12/31/how-to-save-your-own-life/) By Natalie Wee 

“Come on, you can do better than that!” Sirius taunts, because for a moment he’s young again and so is Bellatrix. They’re not enemies, not on different sides of an ideological war, they haven’t both suffered years and years of torment in Azkaban. They’re just cousins whose every disagreement escalates to drawn wands and duelling — not like Cissy who’ll talk you in circles or Andy who’ll walk away instead of fight. 

Maybe it’s that reminiscing that makes him falter, that dulls his reflexes, that clouds his thinking just enough that the next spell strikes him dead in the chest. 

It’s red — like a stunner, like the old less dangerous Bella — but it still makes him stagger back a step, still makes him fall. 

The fabric of the veil drags around him, cold and somehow insubstantial, like stepping through a ghost or plunging into a pool of cold water. The room around goes suddenly quiet, the clash of a dozen people fighting silenced in an instant. It’s eerie and it’s _wrong_ in a way he feels right down to his bones. 

When he pushes himself back up, his wand clenched tightly in his hand, the room is empty. 

Everyone is gone. 

The veil waves gently in a breeze that doesn’t exist and… it’s not like Sirius doesn’t know what it is. Didn’t he grow up with stories of The Witch That Wove The Veil, who divided life from death and forever separated them? Didn’t he listen to his mother and father say, offhand and cold, that all blood-traitors should be thrown through the Veil, like they’d done in the old days? 

He just had never really expected to encounter it. Hadn't expected it to be like this, a single blink, a single step, so easy that he'd _missed_ the transition. 

"Harry!" he calls, voice ringing with panic. He stumbles back towards the Veil, hands outstretched, as if he can push his way back through or at least _see_ — 

But when he pushes through, the room remains just as empty, as if he hasn't gone anywhere at all. As if he can't go anywhere, can't go back, as if this is it. 

How is it _fair_ , that he dies now? Before the fighting starts in earnest, before he ever has a chance to make it all _worth_ something? James and Lily's deaths, being locked up in Azkaban, being locked up in Grimmauld Place, Harry being so trapped in a prophecy that no one can stop? 

And yet, there's nothing he can do about it. There's no way back. He's trapped here, beyond the veil, alone and purposeless. _Is_ he trapped here? Is there more outside this room? Are the other dead here? Could he leave and go and find— 

And then the Veil ripples and moves and someone steps through it. 

"James?" Sirius croaks, for a wild second, but no, no. "Harry?" 

It _is_ Harry, but… he's older, an adult the same age as Remus maybe, dressed in the red robes of an auror. James' invisibility cloak ripples over his shoulders, floating along behind him in shimmering twists of fabric, and he has a stone in one hand and a bone white wand in the other. 

His green eyes are so bright they're almost unreal. 

"Sirius," Harry breathes, as though he too hasn't just stepped through the Veil of Death. 

"Are you alright?" Sirius asks. "What's going on? The Death Eaters?" 

Harry looks a little surprised, then smiles. "The fighting has been over for a long time, Sirius," he says. He turns the stone in his hand, over and over, and it's almost hypnotic. 

_They're walking through a forest, him and James and Lily and Remus and Harry — older than when Sirius had known him, but not this old — as if it's the most natural thing for them all to be together._

_"Does it hurt?" Harry asks._

_"Dying?" Sirius says, or remembers saying, "Not at all. Quicker and easier than falling asleep."_

Sirius blinks and shakes the feeling off, the memory that isn't his own — is it? — intruding into his thoughts. It isn't a happy one, so it isn't something the Dementors ate and took but… it couldn't have. He's dead. And so is James and so is Lily. 

"Harry. Are you… dead?" Sirius asks and it hurts even more than thinking of his own death. He's lost too much to ever think anyone is _safe_ in a war but it's _Harry_ — 

"No," Harry says. "I am Death. Sort of. Things got complicated." He gives a lopsided smile and it's so much like the kid that Sirius knows that he aches. 

"Oh, well. That's good, I suppose?" Better than Harry being dead. If the fighting is over and Harry is an _Auror_ and _old_ then they must have won and — 

It doesn't make it okay, that Sirius is dead and useless, but it's something. Not a happy thought, not something he can lose, but something real to cling to all the same. 

"I suppose," Harry agrees. He seems content to leave it with that, a patience that he hadn't possessed at fifteen, a patience that Sirius doesn't possess _now._

"Should I… do something?" Sirius asks, frowning. "Move on, or something?" He isn't a ghost, not the kind that haunts the halls of Hogwarts, but surely this isn't the final destination either. Not if he's talking to Harry here. Not if he's _alone._

Harry shrugs. "It's up to you," he says. "What do you want to do?" 

Sirius barks a bitter laugh. " _Want_?" he asks. He wants none of this to have ever happened. He wants James and Lily and their little cottage with their little baby. He wants Remus running through the moonlight side by side. He wants Pettigrew to not have betrayed them. He wants his brother to not have been an idiot who got himself killed. He wants his cousins to have not torn everything apart. He wants— 

"Tall order," Harry says, musing. He's still turning the stone over and over in his hands. He nods to himself. "But I think you can do it. Just remember: there are seven pieces. The locket, the cup, the diadem, the ring, the diary, Riddle… and me." 

Sirius frowns. "What does that—" 

And then Harry shoves him firmly in the chest, back through the swaying fabric of the veil. 

_"Regulus has the locket!"_ he calls, voice fading until it's nothing but an echoing whisper at the very edge of hearing. 

Sirius hits the ground hard, with enough force that the breath is knocked out of him, with enough force that he realises he _has to breathe_ again and that he hadn't been— 

Harry — whatever he had been, whatever he had done — is gone. Sirius is alone. 

He lies there for a long moment, staring at the waving cloth of the Veil, trying to understand what the _hell_ just happened. Not dead but _Death_ and he'd pushed Sirius _back out_ — 

Sirius stares at his hands, twisting them and turning them over. They're his hands, but they're the hands he remembers, before Azkaban made him gaunt and skeletal, before he broke his fingers trying to hammer the bars out of his cell over and over again, before the skin cracked and calloused. These are a young man's hands. 

He conjures a shimmering silver mirror and the face in the mirror is a young man's face. 

"What the hell, Harry?" he asks himself. 

The Sirius in the mirror has no answer to give. 

Then, because the universe can't give him a break, he's interrupted by the sound of voices and a door opening. 

Years of fugitive living have ingrained in him the response to _hide_ but even without that Sirius knows that being caught in the Department of Mysteries would be a bad thing. He's banished his mirror and transformed into Padfoot before he has time to think about it, barrelling through the Unspeakables and out the door before they have time to really respond. 

"Was that a Grim?!" 

"Did it come out of the Veil? Has that ever happened before? Are there any changes to the—" 

"Forget that! Catch it first!" 

Sirius _runs_ , paws skidding and nails scratching over the stone, remembering the hasty maps that Arthur had managed to acquire for them and the brief, desperate charge that they'd made when they'd learnt Harry was inside. He's almost certain he's going to get caught, even as he dodges stunners and rope charms, and then manages to break into a hallway, knocking over hapless Ministry employees and tearing his way to the atrium. 

Crashing through a crowd of people as a dog is not a totally unfamiliar circumstance. By necessity, the Marauders had kept their animagi transformation secret — but they weren't by inclination particularly subtle people and there _had_ been a time or two when the benefit of chaos had outweighed the risk. He knows how to duck and weave to avoid grasping hands, how to force his way through a blockade of bodies. 

He throws himself into the apparition bays, outside the anti-apparition wards, and disappears with a crack. 

Apparating as an animagus isn't impossible, but it's not easy either. The way an animal _thinks_ is different — is the very thing that saved Sirius during his time in Azkaban — but it makes the sheer concentration of the spell difficult to hold. He appears three feet too high in an abandoned park, landing with a yelp and the promise of some very sore legs, but without having splinched himself. 

All in all, a relatively positive outcome. 

He limps to a more secluded location before transforming back and apparating again. There's really only one place that he wants to go — if even half of his suspicions are true. 

And if they aren't… 

If they aren't, it'll prove that too. 

But when he arrives in Godric's Hollow, the Potter's cottage is whole and intact. The light in the window is bright and cheerful, and Sirius stands at the gate for a long, long moment and swallows around the lump in his throat. 

It's— 

He's— 

He draws in a breath that doesn't feel deep enough and strides down the footpath, knocking firmly on the front door like he never thought he would again. The last time that he had been here, it had been caved in, destroyed in a destructive blast of curse backfire. 

There's a long silence, and then the door opens carefully. There's only a handful of people who know how to find this place, who have been told the Secret, but Sirius can imagine James checking with extra caution anyway. 

It hadn't been enough but— 

The door swings open. For a second, ironically, Sirius nearly says _Harry?_ because he's realised he's _forgotten_ just what James looked like and he has to swallow again, heavily. 

"James," he says, quietly. "It's Peter. He's the traitor. You and Lily… you need to move." 

"Sirius?" James blinks, owllike, behind his glasses. "What's happened? Has there been an attack?" His hand grips his wand tighter. "We didn't get called." 

"I thought I was so _clever_ suggesting him to be the Secret Keeper," Sirius says, to avoid answering the question and because the bitterness is choking him. "That he was _beneath notice._ And he was, wasn't he? Beneath our notice. He's been selling us out this whole time. You aren't _safe here._ " 

It isn't October, he thinks, so James and Lily have time — maybe — but he can't, won't, leave them at risk. He has to warn them. If he does nothing else, with this chance he has, he _has to warn James._

James glances at him and out over his shoulder down the footpath, checking to see if there's anyone else there. 

It takes a long second for the meaning to sink in, but— 

Sirius takes a step back. It's not the hardest thing he's ever had to do, but it hurts all the same. The suspicion. They'd all suspected each other, at the end there. It had been so easy for people to believe that Sirius had betrayed them, after all. "You don't have to tell me where," he says. "In fact… you really shouldn't tell me where you go. But _please_ , James. If you trust me with _anything_ … don't stay here." 

"I— of course I trust you," James says and it might be weak but it's enough. It has to be enough. "But what's happened, Sirius? Don't keep me in the dark just because I'm in hiding." 

It would be so easy to step into the warmth of their house. So easy that he would never want to leave again. "I will," Sirius says, "but I don't know how much time I have and there's things I need to do. Just… just stay safe, James. And say hi to Harry for me." 

He steps back again and he can see how much James wants to follow him and demand answers — but James has Lily and Harry now, to think about and protect. He _can't._

So Sirius walks away. 

What he _wants_ to do is go and find Pettigrew and curse the rat into a thousand pieces. But that hadn't gone so well for him last time — he has to grudgingly admit that Peter is smarter and more wily than he could have ever expected. Not just that Halloween, but getting away at Hogwarts too. The issue of Pettigrew is one where Sirius will need _backup_ and so it's one that has to wait. 

He apparates instead to the doorstep of Grimmauld Place. If he had hated the house in the future, with its dust and neglect, he hates it even more _now_ as his childhood home. Where his mother and brother still live in it, with their hateful attitudes. 

But — _"Regulus has the locket!"_ — it had been the very last thing Harry had said to him, before sending him back here. It _must_ be important. It's the only hint, the only clue, that he has that might allow him to shift the balance of history, to change the terrible tragedy of his life. 

He charms the front door open, wand clenched in a white knuckled fist and is somewhat surprised that the house wards don't react at all. Then again, they hadn't kept him out in the future and changing a blood ward to exclude certain relatives is a complicated business — most likely his mother had been relying on the fact that Sirius wouldn't _dare_ return, even if he had wanted to, which he most _certainly_ hadn't. 

She isn't home, which he's thankful for. He would have stunned her if he'd had to but he just doesn't want to see her. 

Regulus _is_ home, however. Locked away in his room on the top floor like a recluse, exactly the way he had during the whole of their childhoods. Sirius creeps up the stairs, feeling like an intruder and pushes open Regulus' bedroom door. 

"Where's the locket?" He demands, wand out and ready. He'll curse Reg if he has to, curse him and turn this whole damn house upside looking for it. 

Regulus jumps, startled, because he'd obviously thought he was alone. But his wand also comes readily to hand, as if he'd expected _somebody_ to creep up and curse him. He doesn't look good. His hair is lank and frazzled, like he hasn't washed it and has been running his hands through it, and there are deep bags beneath his eyes. There are pages and pages scattered over his desk, frantic work. 

It's an unusual look for him — Reg, who always _cared so much_ about looking neat and polished and aristocratic. Who had thought _you look like a Black_ meant something good. 

There's a hunched, twisted shape wrapped in blankets on his bed and it takes a long moment for Sirius to recognise it as Kreacher — he wouldn't have expected the house elf to ever _dare_ use the family furniture, nor for Regulus to care enough to let him. Or for Kreacher to ever get sick; the damned elf had managed to outlive Sirius on pure spite alone. 

"Sirius?" Regulus says, like he can't quite believe it, but also, in a way, like he's relieved. 

Given that Sirius _knows_ he'd died — had vanished — some time around now… _He got in over his head,_ he'd told Harry, the only person who had cared to ask, who hadn't known the whole sordid tale already. Yeah, he can see why Regulus might have expected someone worse. 

Not that Sirius isn't bad enough. Not that Sirius would pick his own damned brother over James, over Harry, over _being right._

"Where is it?" Sirius repeats, because the locket is the only thing that matters. The only reason he's here. 

"I don't _have it_ ," Regulus says, frustrated. He runs one hand through his hair, agitated. His wand drops a fraction, still dangerous but no longer quite so ready. "I— I was going to go get it but I can't—" 

Sirius relaxes a fraction too. It doesn't seem like Regulus is going to deny knowing anything about it, which is good. It seems like Regulus might even _know_ more about it than Sirius does. Which is even better, since he knows bugger all. 

"Where is it, then?" Sirius demands. 

But no, of course it couldn't be that easy. Suspicion crosses his brother's face. "How do you know about it? Do you know what it _is_? What do you want with it?" 

Sirius hesitates, then is forced to use the truth. "No idea," he says. _Riddle… and me._ He guesses, "It's part of the prophecy, isn't it? Something that'll bring Voldemort down. Seven important pieces of… something." 

Regulus goes bone white, and Sirius honestly thinks he's going to be ill. "Seven?" he says, horrified. "No. No one would _dare—_ even one is— _Seven._ Sirius, are you sure?" 

"What are they, Reg?" Sirius asks, disturbed. They're important, he knows that but… this isn't adding up. What kind of thing is important to a prophecy? What kind of thing would _Regulus_ know about? 

"A horcrux," Regulus says and it's a meaningless word for a long moment. Sirius has forgotten as much about Dark magic as he could afford to, which was always a little less than he might have liked. "Even one is horrific. He couldn't have made _seven._ He'd be… he'd be…" 

"A monster?" Sirius suggests, but his mind is racing. No _wonder_ Voldemort had returned. No wonder Dumbledore had been so sure he would, if he'd suspected _this._ No wonder Voldemort had seemed so powerful, so undefeatable, so certain of his own success if he had this darkest of magic as his foundation. 

_And me,_ Harry had said and… how did that work —how could a _person_ be a horcrux — but his scar, his visions, his _connection_ … But no. No. Voldemort hadn't touched him _yet_ , wouldn't touch him, if Sirius had anything to say about it. 

Harry was never _going_ to be one. He would find the others, first. He would— 

"What were _you_ going to do with the locket?" Sirius asks, warily. He cannot forget that Regulus isn't on his side. That Regulus _agrees_ with all that stupid blood purity rhetoric. 

"Destroy it," Regulus says promptly, more decisive and determined than Sirius has ever seen him. Then he goes back to looking anxious. "But I couldn't work out how to get back. There are blood wards, inferi, something that sounds like Drink of Despair… it really is quite well defended." 

Sirius raises an eyebrow. "That's… how do you know all that? I didn't think you were _that_ high in the ranks." 

Regulus flinches. "No. I'm not," he says, miserably and reaches over to pat the shivering creature on his bed. "He used Kreacher to set it all up. And left him there to die. But Kreacher managed to get home and tell me. That's how I know.." 

"Shocking," Sirius says, deadpan. "The Dark Lord willing to sacrifice meaningless lives for his own gain. Who could have guessed?"  


"I know," Regulus says, bitterly. "I know, okay? But I'm doing… I was going to do… I was going to put it right! I was going to destroy the locket and do more to fight him than you and your— whatever!" 

Had Regulus managed to do it last time? Maybe. Maybe Voldemort had killed him for it, maybe he'd died in the attempt. But it's— there's something a little warm in knowing that Regulus had tried, at the end. It's not enough to make up for joining the Death Eaters in the first place but… 

Sirius wants his little brother back. 

"But there might be seven of them," Sirius says. Even if Regulus _had_ managed to destroy the locket, it wouldn't have been enough. But this time… "Not just one. And I, well. I _sort of_ know what they are." 

"Right," Regulus says. He takes a deep breath and meets Sirius' eyes, bright and determined. "Right. So. We're going to destroy _all seven_." 


End file.
